As Playbook PM lands in your inbox, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has broken the record set in 2021 by Kevin McCarthy for the longest House floor speech. Jeffries started speaking at 4:52 a.m. in protest of Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” and finished at 1:37 p.m., setting the new mark at eight hours and 45 minutes while flanked by cheering Democrats and a near empty Republican side of the chamber. More from POLITICO’s Nick Wu Jeffreis was deploying his “magic minute” privilege as a House leader to filibuster President Donald Trump’s marquee megabill. Now that he’s finished, the House will proceed to the final vote on the sprawling reconciliation legislation, which is set to pass thanks to last-minute maneuvering from Speaker Mike Johnson and the White House. What Jeffries said: In his odyssey of a speech from the House floor, Jeffries repeatedly blasted the megabill for its projected impacts and read stories of constituents across the country who he said will be devastated by the cuts to Medicaid, POLITICO’s Calen Razor wrote this morning. “I’m planning to take my sweet time,” Jeffries said as he embarked on the endeavor. Though he seemed to tease that July 4 “ain't my deadline” for the bill, a little bit before 1 p.m. he indicated that he was approaching the “end of this particular journey.” The thinking: Jeffries’ last stand against the bill, of course, could only delay the vote. But Jeffries’ intention was to do just that and force Republicans to vote on it during the daytime. It also offered him a chance to preview the type of messaging that Americans will hear plenty of from Democrats ahead of the midterms: “This bill represents the largest cut to health care in American history,” Jeffries said on the floor. Jeffries gave Johnson a heads-up that this was coming, Axios’ Andrew Solender reports. But as the morning dragged on, Johnson’s patience wore thin as he called the speech “an utter waste of everyone’s time,” per WaPo’s Brianna Tucker. Also low on patience: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who told DC Examiner’s Christian Datoc that Jeffries “looks like a bumbling fool.”
It comes after a marathon House session that’s well past 24 hours, Nick notes, and it’s been more than a bit stir crazy. See Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) literally walking laps around the Capitol Rotunda to pass the time this morning … or Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) donning a pair of crocs to make it through the night. Johnson is confident he has the votes to pass Trump’s marquee legislation this afternoon, with only one or two GOP lawmakers still on the outs, Nick and our colleague Cassandra Dumay report. “The president helped answer questions. We had Cabinet secretaries involved, and experts in all the fields, and I think they got there,” Johnson said of the nay-sayers. After the long will-they-won’t-they — the GOP holdouts have found their way to aye with zero changes to the Senate’s version of the megabill. In fact, new amendments were never an option, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said per our colleague Meredith Lee Hill. “It became clear from the president’s meeting at the White House to further conversations later that, for all the back and forth, you know, the bill’s closed.” The White House is already planning a signing ceremony tomorrow, though the timing isn’t set in stone, Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reports. As of now, it’s set for 5 p.m. on July Fourth — and certain to be full of pomp and circumstance. Despite Jeffries’ long sidebar, Trump is cashing in his wins. “What a great night it was. One of the most consequential Bills ever. The USA is the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, by far!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social at 9:41 a.m. The other hot news this morning was the June jobs report showing better than expected numbers, with 147,000 new jobs added, WSJ’s Konrad Putzier and Justin Lahart report. The unemployment rate also fell from 4.2 percent to 4.1 percent. Unsurprisingly, Wall Street’s happy: the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq opened at record highs this morning. It all amounts to a boon of a day for the president, and Trump world is already celebrating. “The universe is healing,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said on X, touting a drop in immigrant employment. Scalise, meanwhile, claimed that the job numbers are part of a growing optimism from the megabill, and that businesses are “factoring that into their decision making,” he told Bloomberg’s Erik Wasson. This afternoon, Trump heads to Iowa for a big pre-July Fourth celebration at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, where he’ll launch an even bigger celebration — a yearlong festival called the “the Great American State Fair” to mark America’s 250th anniversary and culminate on July 4, 2026, WaPo’s Cat Zakrzewski and colleagues write. Good Thursday afternoon — and happy Independence Day eve! Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Programming note: We’ll be off tomorrow, but Playbook will still be in your inbox in the morning. Get in touch at abianco@politico.com.
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